Don't let go

Pain. It was the first thing she knew. Pain and nausea. Then buzzing. A very familiar irritating sound, but she couldn’t quite place it. The sound pulsated through her, getting on her nerves and making her whole body ache even more. She opened her eyes and quickly closed them again. The sunlight was too bright. It hurt as if someone slashed at her eyes with a razor. She breathed in slowly and then breathed out, trying to remember. Her head hurt as if she had a hangover, her mind was foggy. A simple task of thinking left her short of exhausted. After a while the buzzing mercifully stopped. She waited for a minute before trying to look around again. She blinked a few times, now finding the sunlight more or less bearable. She was in a car. The car was on the side of an unremarkable dirt road. Was it even hers? It seemed unlikely, she was pretty sure she would know her own car. Not that she had lost her memory completely, she knew who she was. It was just the last few hours (or days?) she had no recollection of. Parker lifted her hand to adjust the mirror and winced from the pain in her muscles. Taking a single glance in the mirror made her gasp. What had happened to her? That couldn’t be her, could it? Her lower lip was split, her left eye was black and swollen, there were some gashes on her forehead and a huge purple bruise on her right cheekbone. ‘You look just like your mother,’said a cruel mocking voice in her head. The photos from her mother’s medical report flashed before Parker's mind’s eye, followed by a vivid memory of Catherine opening the door to assure her that all was fine. 'Mom's all right, sweetheart,' mom had said before the flash of lightning just as bright as this sunlight had lit up her battered face, exposing her white lie. Parker realized she was staring into the space in front of her for some time now. The sun burnt her skin through the windshield. She was thirsty. It felt as if her mouth was full of cotton balls. The buzzing started again. It came from the passenger’s seat. Her phone. She took it and opened, pressing the reply button. “What?” she croaked. Her throat felt dry and raw and she tried to clear it. “Miss Parker?” A familiar low voice. “Jarod?” She sounded a little better this time, more like herself. “What’s with your… Are you all right?” he asked, obviously worried by her uncharacteristic reply. Parker closed her eyes for a moment. She was not all right. Not even close. “No,” she whispered. She pressed the phone to her ear and hissed in pain, her bruised cheek hurting. “Miss Parker? What is it? Where are you?” Now Jarod sounded even more alarmed. She shaded her eyes with her free hand and looked around again. “I don’t know,” she answered, confused. It was hard to move her tongue in her mouth. Jarod was silent for a moment, then asked, “What happened to you?” What, indeed? Did she even want to know? She suddenly remembered a dark street and muffled footsteps behind her. Gaining on her. The terror she had felt. Then a pair of hands, grabbing her by the shoulder, pressing to her mouth… She sat up abruptly, the movement caused her so much pain she cried out. She looked down at her body, at her bare and bruised legs. There was only some kind of dirty and torn nightdress on her. She gasped and put her free hand over her mouth, horrified. “Miss Parker?” She closed her eyes. A guess became a certainty as sensations in her pelvic area confirmed her worst suspicions. “Oh my god,” she whispered. *** He was outright scared now. She was hurt and lost and, by the sound of it, terrified. She had never asked for help, not of him, not of anybody else. That didn’t mean she didn’t need it. He hurriedly switched on his laptop and ran the tracking program. “Don’t hang up, I’ll try to pinpoint your location,” he told her. “Are you in immediate danger?” he asked, pressing his phone to his ear with one shoulder and typing fast on a keyboard with both hands. “I… I don’t think so,” came her answer. Damn, she sounded so lost. So unlike her. “Are you hurt?” Pause. He froze and held his breath. “Yes… They hurt me pretty bad.” They? Who’s ‘they’? But it didn’t matter at this moment, so Jarod tried to push all the unnecessary questions aside and once again busied himself with his tracking program. Oh, come on! He needed those coordinates! At last the program beeped and showed the result of his search. He checked a map, calculating the route from his place to where Parker was. “Miss Parker? Are you still there?” She didn’t answer straight away and his heart fell. Then came her barely audible confirmation, and he continued, “I will need at least three hours to get to your location. It seems you are in the middle of nowhere. Do you have some shelter?” “I’m in a car,” she replied and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. That’s good… Can you drive? I can tell you how to get to the nearest town.” Jarod heard a quiet rustle as if she was looking for something. “I don’t know if I have the keys.” He was already packing a few things he might need into a bag. “Ok. If you find the keys, go west, it’s about 15 miles to the nearest town. Is the battery of your phone charged?” Another pause. Then, “Yes.” He was at the door. This trip would be the longest in his life, he was already sure of it. “I will call you from the airport. In case there’s no keys, just ask for help if someone passes by.” “No!” she exclaimed, startled. Jarod froze in his tracks. “Why?” “I… I’ll just wait for you.” What the hell had happened to her? The thought that she might just be luring him out had never crossed his mind. *** Jarod stared at the empty dirt road. He was surrounded by fields, there even was a small grove of apple trees in full bloom nearby. Birds were singing cheerfully. But there was no sign of Parker. He had called her before he had boarded the plane and immediately after landing, and she had sounded better each time, more like her old self. But where had she gone? Had she found the car keys and left? Had he messed up with the location? Fear gripped him as he took out his cell phone. One ring, two… “Jarod?” He breathed a sigh of relief. “Where are you? Did you leave?” “Not exactly, I was afraid someone might see… Wait a second.” He heard an engine start nearby and then saw a car coming out of the apple grove. He could make out her figure behind the steering wheel, but when the car approached close enough for him to see her face, he gasped in horror. He too had seen those pictures of her mother taken after her assault. Parker stopped the car but didn’t get out. He jumped out of his car, not bothering to put the jacket on, and ran towards her. He opened the driver's door and froze. She looked like hell. She was obviously beaten. Her face… He groaned inwardly and looked lower, realizing he had seen nothing yet. She had no clothes on except for some dirty baggy gown, her shoulders and arms were bruised, her wrists… oh, god, there were cuts and raw chafing on her wrists as if somebody had put a pair of handcuffs on her and jerked her around by it for hours. There was a bite mark on her collarbone. Jarod stared at it for several moments, his mind went completely empty. “And that’s not even the worst part,” Parker said hoarsely, bringing him back to reality. He looked up at her face, noticing her blank gaze, and then down again. Her legs were bruised too and… there was something that horribly looked like dried blood on her thighs barely covered by the gown. He had no words, he felt empty and cold on this warm spring day. The singing of birds felt like a cruel mocking now. He reached for her, not knowing what to do, but as soon as his fingers touched her shoulder, she recoiled from him as if the touch burned her. “Please… Just don’t… don’t touch me,” she whispered, and his heart bled for her. Jarod licked his lips and nodded. He had had some experience with victims of sexual assaults before so he knew what she was going through. At least in theory. It felt absolutely wrong to think about her as a victim. How could this happen? To Parker, to his strong and fierce Parker… He stood beside her, his hands helplessly hanging by his sides. He felt useless. No. She needed his help so he would do his best to help her. He had to get a grip on himself. “We need to get you to a hospital,” he said at last. It seemed to him that words got stuck in his throat and scratched it from inside. “No kidding,” she murmured in reply. He looked around, thinking. “I need you to get into my car. If there is some evidence in yours, we don’t want to ruin it,” he told her. “Can you stand?” Parker grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and the top of the driver’s door with the other and tried to get out. Her legs barely held her, she obviously felt dizzy. There was no way she could let go of the car and walk those several feet to Jarod’s vehicle by herself. She looked at him helpless. He held out a hand. “Would it be okay for you to hold onto my arm if I put a jacket on?” Ignoring his words about the jacket, she reached for his arm tentatively, ready to jerk her hand away at any moment as if Jarod’s hand was a poisonous snake. At last she made a decision and leaned on his arm. “I don’t mind touching you,” she noticed as if to herself, obviously trying to control her voice. Jarod looked at her hand on his arm. She tried. She tried hard to not let what had happened to her affect her actions. She was a fighter if nothing else. He felt a sting in his eyes and looked away. “Let’s go,” he said and turned towards his car. She took a step and gasped in pain, looking down. She had no shoes on and small pebbles cut into the soles of her feet. Jarod swore silently at his inattention. “I can carry you…” he started, but Parker didn’t let him finish. Her fingers painfully dug into his flesh. “No, please don’t. I can’t stand it,” she breathed out. “All right, all right, stay here,” Jarod told her hurriedly. He came back to his car, got in and started the engine. He moved the car so the passenger seat was now just opposite Parker. All she needed to do after he opened the door was to reach for the seat and get inside. He returned to her side and with the minimum help from him she was safely seated inside. He took her keys from the ignition of her car, checked for her documents, found none, closed the door and finally locked the center lock. Then hereturned to the driver seat near Parker. He didn’t move for several minutes just staring in front of him and then suddenly asked, “Are you thirsty?” Parker looked up at him and once again horror washed over Jarod. Who would do such a thing? “Yeah,” she croaked. Her lips looked dry. He reached behind him and got a bottle of water from the back seat. He handed it to her, making sure he would not touch her fingers. “Thanks,” she said, and he knew she was thanking him not only for the water. “So, I was thinking,” Jarod started, while she drank. “I presume you wouldn’t want to file a report?” She didn’t even have to answer him. She just gave him the look, and he proceeded, “There is this hospital I worked for once. It’s about a two-hour drive from here. I know the personnel there quite well. I can make arrangements…” He trailed off. Parker sat with her head low and fidgeted with the water bottle. “All right,” she agreed when he didn’t say anything else. She breathed in, trying to regain at least a semblance of control, and asked, “What’s the procedure?” Jarod swallowed hard. “They’ll assign you a female doctor. She’ll make a SAFE.” “A what?” He could not look into her eyes. This was not happening. “A Sexual Assault Forensic Exam,” he explained softly. “We need to make sure… there are no far-reaching consequences.” “I see,” Parker said, and he thought her voice sounded detached, almost cold. He glanced at her for a moment. She was sitting straight now, her chin up. She saw a clear aim in front of her and was ready to overcome it just as she had overcome all the horrible things life had put in her way before. Or at least she tried to convince herself that she was ready. “So, let’s move. I want to get it over with.” Jarod sighed. Was she going into denial already? Would she try to downplay what had happened to her? Whether she understood it or not, there was a long road towards recovery in front of her. Would she let him stay by her side for it? He doubted she herself knew the answer to that question. He put the car into gear, made a U-turn and drove east. *** They were driving for an hour without saying a word the entire time. Parker wasn’t in the mood for a chit chat, she just looked out of the window at the almost empty streets of yet another small town. Pieces of recollections started to emerge in her mind. She wished they didn’t. Jarod obviously didn’t know what to say to her. She understood the difficulty. What could one say in such a situation? No need to be a psychologist to realize that nothing would make her feel better just now. She needed medical help and time. “Are you hungry?” he asked suddenly. “I don’t suppose they’d fed you.”He looked at her sideways. Oh, Jarod… She smiled a terrible smile. “Not with food.” He choked. He looked like he would have slapped himself if he wasn’t driving. “Parker, I’m sorry…” “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jarod!” she exclaimed, unexpected rage rose in her like a wave. “Stop with that mournful look! I’m not dying! I just have been raped.” Jarod put his foot on the brake so forcefully that a car behind them barely avoided a collision. The driver angrily blared a horn, overtook them and sped away. Parker jerked forward because of the sharp stop, cried out in pain, caused by the safety belt, and pressed her arms to her breasts. “What the hell, Jarod?” she demanded furiously. Jarod bit his lower lip and pulled over to a curb. He stopped the car and closed his eyes; knuckles of his fingers on the steering wheel became white he gripped it so tightly. He drew a long breath in through his nose and then breathed out just as slowly through his mouth. Parker regretted her outburst immensely, but could do nothing about it after the fact. It had just happened and as suddenly as her anger appeared it drained away. She looked at Jarod. “Give me a moment,” he asked. He released the steering wheel and pressed both his hands to his face, rubbed it and then looked around. Apparently, he saw what he was looking for, because in the next moment he said, “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,” and left the car. Parker didn’t look where he went. She was busy fighting back tears. The horror of what had happened to her started to dawn on her little by little. This time she would not be able to put her mask on and pretend nothing had occurred. She didn’t know what to do and how to respond to this situation. She didn’t understand her reactions, couldn’t predict what she would do or say the next moment. She felt scared and confused and totally out of control. She desperately needed to get that control back. Was it at least in part how Jarod had felt during his life in the Centre? Had he ever felt this helpless? How had he survived having no say in what had been done to him? She had never allowed herself to think about it. Pity and compassion could cost her dearly. Maybe it was her time to pay retribution. She watched Jarod coming back through the windshield. He looked grim and pale. This couldn’t be easy for him, she thought suddenly. He reminded her of their childhood friendship often enough, besides in his words she often sensed something… Something she didn’t want to name, didn’t want to accept from him. But that had made her believe that he would not hurt her and that he would be there for her if she needed him. She trusted him enough to accept his help and she was sure he would do everything possible and even beyond that to accomplish just that. He carried a plastic bag in one hand and something that looked like a parcel in the other. He put the bag on the hood of the car, approached her door, opened it and handed her the parcel. It turned out to be a thin plaid. “I thought you might be a bit more comfortable if you wrap yourself in it,” Jarod said. She took the plaid from him and wrapped it around her shoulders. He then retrieved the plastic bag from the hood and got a food container from it. Parker started to shake her head. “No, Jarod, no…” “I thought I’d buy it just in case,” Jarod suggested, unsure. “It's chicken soup.” He opened the lid. As soon as the smell of the soup hit her, Parker felt a wave of nausea rise inside of her. She pushed Jarod aside, bent forward and vomited on the pavement. Thankfully, her stomach was empty except for the water she had drunk earlier. “Oh, Miss Parker,” moaned Jarod and hastily put the offending soup away. Parker wiped her lips with the back of her hand and sat straight. “I really appreciate the thought, Jarod, but, as you can see, I’m not hungry,” she said with her eyes closed and her head leaned against a headrest. Jarod stood beside her with his shoulders slumped for a moment, then mumbled, “Sorry,” tossed the food container into the nearest trash bin and returned to the driver seat. “Next time just ask, okay?” she told him, took her bottle of water and rinsed her mouth. Jarod offered her a paper tissue, then started the engine and put the car into gear. “I really am sorry,” he said again in a few minutes. “It’s just…” He trailed off, not knowing how to explain. Low buildings of the town they’d just passed by had been replaced by vast green fields. White fluffy clouds were running across the sky and the sunset colored it in a beautiful palette of pink, orange and purple. It felt as if the whole world was living the best of its life, while she was stuck in this dark place. “Have you ever worked with women who were…” Parker started then paused. “Women like me?” She looked at his profile sideways. He kept staring straight ahead, his jaw muscles tense. “I just thought you could tell me in detail what I need to prepare for,” she elaborated, when Jarod failed to answer right away. “Yeah,” he said at last. His gaze had never left the road ahead. “Once.” “Why did you do it? I thought it’s always a female doctor.” Jarod was silent for a moment, then explained, “It really depends on a victim’s preferences. Most women can’t stay in the same room with a man after… Well, in that case it was a rather secluded community and I happened to be the only doctor there. Let’s just say, there weren’t many choices. So, I did the exam.” He obviously wasn’t comfortable discussing this topic, but Parker needed this conversation. It provided her with an opportunity to talk about what happened to her without really talking abouther. “Did you find the perpetrator?” “His identity wasn’t ever a question. The bastard was her husband,” Jarod said angrily. Parker looked out of the window for some time, thinking of nothing. Now she felt strangely empty. It was so confusing – these changes in her mood. But she supposed that empty was good. Calm. “When did it happen?” She turned to Jarod once again. “About a year and a half ago,” he answered. She was sure he had already known what her next question would be. “Is she alright now? Do you know?” Luckily this story had a happy ending. “Yes, she is doing great, actually,” Jarod said. “She remarried eight months ago and, as far as I know, is expecting a baby.” Parker sighed. Jarod glanced her way, and she was shaken by the anguish in his eyes. “Look, I won’t even try to tell you that I know how you feel right now, though taking my abilities into account I think I can make a pretty good guess. But I promise you that it’ll get better,” Jarod said kindly. “Your body will heal quite quickly, in a matter of a couple of weeks. Psychological trauma is harder to deal with, but you’ll get there eventually. I can only promise to do whatever I can to help you.” “It feels like my whole life is a sequence of psychological traumas,” Parker said and gave a bitter laugh. “It’s as if I build some kind of a collection of those.” “I wish I could change that,” Jarod sighed. “You deserve so much better.” She looked at him for a long moment then turned away without commenting.